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A review by katykelly
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
5.0
Time travel with heart, a family story.
With shades of 'About Time' (Bill Nighy), this time travel story is self-referential, nostalgic for the 1980s, a love letter to our teenage selves, and a sad story about growing up and old and watching those we love do the same.
It's the story of a woman who hasn't had the life she might have wanted, Alice works in the school she herself attended, interviewing potential new families, going home to her apartment, seeing her best friend occasionally between Sam's childcare commitments, and visiting her author father in the hospital where he's sick after a lifetime of cigarettes and poor habits. As she turns 40, she happens to see her teenage crush, interviewing with his wife and son for a place at her school, and in the midst of this mid-life turmoil... she wakes up in her childhood bedroom, in her teenage body, on her 16th birthday.
Not only does Alice find she has the chance to live the day again, but that it might just have an affect on her 'real' life... and she might want to talk to her father about it all... her father who writes books for children about time travel.
It's smart. It doesn't try to replicate any particular time travel story before it (and in fact manages a great scene with writers all discussing time travel theories in literature), it feels almost possible (outside of the 'suspend your disbelief' nature of the entire narrative). I liked how Alice was both the 40 year old and 16 year old simulataneously, this had to work carefully around seeing a teenage crush again whilst in reality being 40.
And I loved Alice and Sam's relationship, spanning the decades, being so trusting and intimate. Almost as much as I fell for her relationship with her father Leonard. The ultimate hippy/relaxed parent. Her adoration was eye-glisteningly real.
I also loved the conclusions Alice and the book both came to, nothing that make take you by surprise, but a gradual unfolding of events that draws towards inevitability maybe, but sadly. Sweetly.
Would you change your past if you could? You might answer differently after some thought. It is always worth assessing your life at 40 (writes the 41-year-old), and a book that manages to reference My So Called Life and Ferris Bueller is not a bad way to help you do that.
With thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy.
With shades of 'About Time' (Bill Nighy), this time travel story is self-referential, nostalgic for the 1980s, a love letter to our teenage selves, and a sad story about growing up and old and watching those we love do the same.
It's the story of a woman who hasn't had the life she might have wanted, Alice works in the school she herself attended, interviewing potential new families, going home to her apartment, seeing her best friend occasionally between Sam's childcare commitments, and visiting her author father in the hospital where he's sick after a lifetime of cigarettes and poor habits. As she turns 40, she happens to see her teenage crush, interviewing with his wife and son for a place at her school, and in the midst of this mid-life turmoil... she wakes up in her childhood bedroom, in her teenage body, on her 16th birthday.
Not only does Alice find she has the chance to live the day again, but that it might just have an affect on her 'real' life... and she might want to talk to her father about it all... her father who writes books for children about time travel.
It's smart. It doesn't try to replicate any particular time travel story before it (and in fact manages a great scene with writers all discussing time travel theories in literature), it feels almost possible (outside of the 'suspend your disbelief' nature of the entire narrative). I liked how Alice was both the 40 year old and 16 year old simulataneously, this had to work carefully around seeing a teenage crush again whilst in reality being 40.
And I loved Alice and Sam's relationship, spanning the decades, being so trusting and intimate. Almost as much as I fell for her relationship with her father Leonard. The ultimate hippy/relaxed parent. Her adoration was eye-glisteningly real.
I also loved the conclusions Alice and the book both came to, nothing that make take you by surprise, but a gradual unfolding of events that draws towards inevitability maybe, but sadly. Sweetly.
Would you change your past if you could? You might answer differently after some thought. It is always worth assessing your life at 40 (writes the 41-year-old), and a book that manages to reference My So Called Life and Ferris Bueller is not a bad way to help you do that.
With thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy.